Announcements Difficult Discussions

Difficult Discussions – Christian Evangelicalism And Critical Race Theory (Announcement)

When: Thursday, September 23, 2021, 10 am-12 pm (Mountain Daylight Time)

Register for online seminar: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEucemuqjgiGtLzNgdy18rsYEEinRCDOn25

Once you register, you will automatically receive a participation link.

For more information contact whitestone.pubs@gmail.com.

Political polarization has reached white heat in America, but it is also a growing force outside the United States, even in the developing world. Political scientists and social theorists have pointed to a broad spectrum of factors that explain these spreading fractures and divisions – deepening economic inequalities, the siloing of information sources and a narrowing of cognitive perspectives due to the impact of social media, historic patterns of racial oppression, the irreconcilability of moral stances and religious world views.

Difficult Discussions is a project of Whitestone Publications, which includes The New Polis. It is designed both to probe surgically and courageously into the sources of these differences and to seek a modicum of rational conversation with the aim of extracting some slender threads of agreement, even among the most hardened partisans.

Each Difficult Discussion focuses a current topic that has already generated considerable publicity and intense controversy. It brings both experts and educated lay persons together from different sides of the ideological spectrum to engage with each other in a thoughtful, civil, and hopefully constructive manner.

During each Difficult Discussion one group of participants will offer a five-minute opening statement following a prompt, or series of prompts, related to the topic at hand. Another group will then respond by clarifying or posing challenges to these statements. Both opening statements and challenges will be prepared in advance and shared among participants. Following these exchanges a third group consisting of Whitestone Publications staff will evaluate both statements and responses while offering some of their own perspectives. The discussion will then be open to all who have joined from the outside.

Evert Difficult Discussion will be video-recorded and posted on this website. A written transcript will also be published.

The initial Difficult Discussion is scheduled for Thursday, September 23, 2021 from 12-2 pm Mountain Daylight Time. The topic is the ongoing controversy over Critical Race Theory among evangelicals in general and the Southern Bapist Convention in particular.

Prompt: Explain in straightforward language what you understand “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) to mean and why, or why not, is it important for Christian evangelicals to make significant use of it in the development of their personal faith, theology, and everyday practice?

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